I did know it, but it’s more fun to hear what she has to say. “No.”
“It’s one of the most dangerous coasts in the world,” she says with pride.
“Ah. What kind of cargo did they carry?”
“All kinds of things. Gold, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And sometimes jewels or stuff like that, and all kinds of things, really. Sometimes they were on their way to China or Japan.”
“Is there still a lot of lost treasure?”
“Maybe. People still look for stuff.”
“Mmm.” I open the cookies and grab a handful of pink and white frosted elephants. “If I found treasure, I would like to find a crown. With rubies.”
“I would like to find a diamond necklace.”
“I would like to find emeralds.”
“You already have an emerald ring.”
“Yes.” I hold out my left hand, where the square-cut emerald Dmitri gave me lives on my ring finger. We never married because I didn’t want to, but I wore the ring to please him. Looking at the deep translucent color, I think of him, his big way of laughing, of living, a big drinker, a big eater, a big chance-taker. It still seems impossible that a virus could have felled him. It was a brutal way for such a social man to have died, and it still hollows me out to imagine him alone in that hospital room, forbidden any visitors at all, myself included.
“Was he your husband?”
“No.” From the bag, I choose a Hershey’s Kiss and peel the foil away. “But we were together a long time. Almost twenty years.”
“Didn’t you want to get married?”
“No,” I tell her honestly. “I liked my own way of doing things.”
“Hmm.” She pulls hair out of her face and takes a bite of a cookie, studying my face. “Do you miss him?”
“Dmitri?” She met him a couple of times, though not here. He didn’t care for the cold Oregon coast, but when Jasmine and Phoebe and Stephanie came to visit, they stayed with me. Dmitri went to Disneyland with us, and enjoyed it as much as Jasmine did. She adored him from the first moment. “Yeah, sometimes. It’s easier now than it was at first, which is how life goes.”
“He was really nice.”
“He was.”
“Was he old when he died?”
I take a breath. “Kind of. But he probably would still be around if not for COVID.”
“COVID,” she says with a weariness far beyond her years.
“Exactly.”
We’re quiet for a little while, eating our feast and watching waves rise and fall and ripple toward shore.
“I want my nana to be a hundred before she dies,” Jasmine says into the space.
I nod, listening, feeling there’s more.
“If she’s a hundred, then I’ll be grown up and maybe married and have some kids and it won’t be so horrible that she has to die.”
My heart folds completely in half, squeezes itself until I nearly can’t breathe. “That’s really sweet, Jasmine.”
“Do you think she will? Live to be a hundred?”
“Why not?” I say. “She’s healthy and artists are known to live a really long time because they love their work.”
“Is that true?”
I chuckle, hold up my hands. “I swear.”
She nods.
“Amma was ninety-four. That’s almost a hundred.”
“Amma? Yeah. I went to her funeral.”
“I remember. It helped your nana to have you there to hold her hand.” I think of the house afterward, the parade of people; then finally, it was only Phoebe and me, left behind in the yawning emptiness of Beryl’s house.
She nods, sucking the frosting from a cookie. “I remember things from when I was two. We had this house with a window seat and my mom said I couldn’t remember that but I do. It had purple flowered cushions.”
“That’s impressive. Most people don’t have memories that early.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe not from being two, but I remember a lot. My mom died when I was eight, and I was so sad that I made myself think about everything I could remember, over and over.”
“Your mom died when you were a little girl?”
“Yeah.” A wisp of memory comes to me, her blonde hair, the way she sang to me, and I feel a pain so old it’s polished to a patina.
“I can’t even stand to think about my mom or Nana dying.” She stares at the horizon, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have said that. Then she asks, “How did she die?”